My Wonderful Padlet by Marcelina O Palmer

"I Am From..." Video Link

mpalmer127 — 2023-09-04 00:55:10 UTC

Syllabus Questions

mpalmer127 — 2023-09-04 01:13:32 UTC

For our dance final on Dec. 8th, when it say share class material and reflections in front of an audince, is this a presentation?

Week 2 Padlet Reflection

mpalmer127 — 2023-09-07 21:24:09 UTC

How has your ethnographic research and this week’s reading informed how you have inhabited and understood your body’s movements in your classes this past week?

When I first read the first and second reading for this week, I was a little confused by it at first. Butts and cultural knowledge were things that I initially thought would go together. But as I read further, I saw a collation between these two articles I found interesting. Ballet and dance as we “know it” has been shaped by the predominately upper-class white society. Ballet is said to be the “foundation of all dance forms” which is something I’ve found recently to be not true. I’ve always had teachers telling me to “stick mt belly in” or “stop arching your back”, as I would have what most would call a swayed back. It never hurt but I remembered always pouting about why I was one of the only kids in my class being told this correction in ballet, but not in latin jazz or hip-hop. I thought it was a little weird until looking at the articles for this week more. I thought I would try something different by doing two things. 1.) letting spine and body relax into their natural alignment and 2.) moving my body to make me feel good and happy. At first I thought that this wasn’t that big of a challenge. Although I made my own discovery. I found that this past week has been a lot easier on my body. I didn’t feel any tightness or soreness in my lower back and found myself even more relaxed after our hour and twenty minute classes. Everything is classes felt more liberating and made me dance from a place that felt more natural on my body.

Week 4 Creative Response

mpalmer127 — 2023-09-25 22:11:28 UTC

Week 5 Padlet Reflection

mpalmer127 — 2023-10-01 20:24:20 UTC

Reflect on how discrimination and other systems of social and cultural oppression impact different bodies differently. How does this shape art-making and the field of dance more broadly? Examine your personal lineage and artistic predecessors/mentors and reflect on their different approaches to dancing and dancemaking as well as how various social, cultural, and political changes may have informed what they have passed along to you.

There is a long history of discrimination, segregation, and violence surrounding people of color. Culture was lost for enslaved Americans as White Americans created laws and regulations to keep enslaves Americans under their control. In the late 1800s for example, Native American boarding schools were built in an effort to forcefully convert Native American children to Christianity, and there punished for speaking or practicing their native language. This resulted in a lot of these children losing their sense of identity. In the reading this week we talked about the ring dance and the cake walk and how these were practiced on plantations by enslave African Americans. The cake walk a way of dancing that the enslaved created to mock their slave owners/masters in how they walk and act. This week has really opened my eyes to the history of dance and how I was raised to know it. When watching clips of enslave African Americans dances, I realized that styles like jazz, modern, and tap wouldn’t have been American styles of dance, and probably would have been started in Africa. A lot of the styles of dance that we have today were influenced by cultural practice of minorities and were then appropriated. Like in the African workshop on Friday, the moves and beats made by the drummers and teacher were driven by a “feeling”. At my studio, one of the first classes I ever took with my dance director was Latin Jazz along with ballet. I loved it as I gave me a taste of ballroom dance and tap into my roots as a person with Caribbean descent. Though I now really don't remember talking about the origins of this style, in the past 7 years, a lot more of my teachers have been going more into the history of certain dance styles. For example, in tap, we looked more in defining time steps and who are important tap figures like “John Bubbles”. And modern classes we would focus on Martha Graham technique and look a lot at videos and clips. I am very grateful that my studio would focus on the history of certain styles like hip-hop, modern, and tap which I feel is a lot more accessible.

Week 8 Creative Response

mpalmer127 — 2023-10-23 03:18:51 UTC

This last week I’ve personally have had a lot of feelings about colored bodies in a predominantly white space and how in an educational space and uncomfortable feelings of both sides when race comes into the picture. Again, I’ll restate that I believe that there are a lot of ignorance when it comes to colored bodies sharing with white bodies a dance space. I want there to be more open conversation about education and history of dance without there being a pressure on colored bodies to educate or forced to speak about affinity groups that they may not identify about.
(P.S. - Sorry about the audio, I don't know how to mute it, and you have to listen to my breathing.)

Week 9 Padlet Reflection (Mental Health/Self-Care)

mpalmer127 — 2023-10-27 17:57:59 UTC

What have you noticed about your ability to change, grow, and practice self-care in the past two months. How might this be connected to your understanding of resiliency?

Class, work, dance, rehearsal, eat, sleep, repeat. Sorry, I can’t hang out, I have to get my homework done. Class, work, dance, rehearsal, eat, sleep, repeat. Wait…what day is it? Class, work, dance, rehearsal, eat, sleep, repeat. Just one more assignment, then I’ll go to bed. Class, work, dance, rehearsal, eat, sleep…. I can’t do this anymore.

I think saying I’ve over committed would be an understatement. This past week, I’ve realized that I don’t really do this thing that people call “self-care”, if we’re being transparent, I don’t really have time for it (which is frankly, resulting in my burnout). Personally, I would like to say that I have resilience since I’m a competition kid and understand the long hours and constant running around since a very young age. Even back at home I never really took the time to work self-care into my schedule consistently. Most of the time I would do homework until 12am-2am because dance classes ran so late, and I had to get up at 3:30-4:00am to catch my bus at 4:45-5:00am. So, I feel it's fair to say that I’ve never really practiced, nor understood what healthy self-care tactics are. I recently got into knitting and crocheting last year, and I actually enjoy the challenge that comes with it, and I’ve always enjoyed reading a nice book. After this week, I understand the importance of self-care and want to actively try to stick to the self-care schedules we made in ballet this week. Even though I’m doing a lot, I know that its ok to take more time for myself and to have moments of relaxation in my busy week.

Week 12 Reflection:

mpalmer127 — 2023-11-20 04:08:45 UTC

This last week was really hard for me, as a lot was going on. I don’t really feel like restating what happened as that would just make me very emotional. So, for this week I was trying to focus on the things that need to get done. And one of those things was trying to act normally in class. Having tech for Reset all last week, made me extremely exhausted as well as dealing with personal things, I was feeling antisocial as well as being very short with people (which I feel is out of character for me). At the beginning of the week, I wasn’t really talking with people as I just didn’t feel like being around people, which made people notice so I had to switch up my plan. I started acting like my normal self so every one of my peers would stop asking if I was okay. Doing this actually made me feel better as I had made a distraction for myself by participating in class (specifically dance class and rehearsals) just did make me feel better. Dance really is my everything and I really don’t think I could have made it through this last week without it.